"What do you plan to do for birth control?" my midwife asked. It was my six-week postpartum checkup, and she had just pronounced that it was safe for me to have sex.

"Birth control?" I said, like she was speaking a foreign language. I was hormonal and emotionally fragile after a difficult birth, and now I was nursing a newborn. I was thinking about having sex again the same way I was planning to lose my baby weight — sometime in the future, but certainly not right now. "There's a pill that's safe to take when you're breast-feeding," she told me, and scribbled down the name. I stuck it in my wallet, just like I once took guys' numbers knowing I'd never call.

In part because I felt like we were supposed to get back in the saddle, my husband and I tried having sex a few days later (with a condom). Even though I'd had a C-section, intercourse was surprisingly painful and, despite the two glasses of mood-setting chardonnay I drank beforehand, not at all romantic. After 15 minutes we decided to give up, and it was another few weeks before I was ready to go all the way again. Parenthood (which is, uh, caused by sex) often leads to a sexual drought that seems strangely taboo for women to talk about. Pain, lack of desire... I've noticed that friends clam up about it all, even after being totally open about every TMI detail of pregnancy. No one has written What to Expect When You're No Longer Expecting But Your Husband Expects to Have Sex and the Sex Isn't What You Were Expecting. Yet we're all familiar with some of the reasons babies make sex a challenge: the exhaustion, the limited time, the stress. Plus, kids have a way of taking over every space they're in. It's hard to get in the mood when I roll over in bed onto a ZhuZhu Pet.

Sex did get better for my husband and me, bit by bit, and I was relieved to find that the pain was temporary. We did it during our daughter's afternoon naps at first, blessed with a good sleeper. When she dropped the nap, we would sneak in ultra-quickies while she played happily down the hall. (My husband and I are self-employed, which helped.) The biggest change over the past five years — our daughter is in kindergarten now — is that sex is almost always planned. I used to be bothered by that until I realized that these "dates" ensure that our sex life keeps going.

But that's just my experience. What about everyone else? I wanted to break this silly taboo, get people talking, and find out how other couples deal with the challenges of sex after parenthood. (And, okay, I was also a little curious to see how my husband and I measure up.)

FOR LOTS OF US, sex starts to change before the babies are even born. Sandra*, 42, had no interest in sex while she was carrying her second child. Well, not with her husband, anyway. "I only wanted to have sex with myself," she says. "It was usually during the day when he wasn't around. It was a lot less labor-intensive not having to deal with another person, and there wasn't much room for a penis in my vagina since my uterus and cervix seemed to take up every inch in there."

For Steve Shubin and his wife, sex wasn't even an option: She had a high-risk pregnancy, and her obstetrician told them no intercourse for the whole nine months. So, to get him through, Steve decided to design — he's an ex-cop, not an engineer — a toy that would simulate sex. "My wife was supportive," he recalls. "Her only condition was that I get rid of it when she was able to have sex regularly again." So he created the Fleshlight — which, if you want to imagine it, looks like a flashlight filled with a skin-like material. It has since generated $200 million in sales. (Nice little college fund, Steve!)

While some pregnant women's libidos crash, other moms told me they reveled in their new ultrawomanly bodies: "Being pregnant and watching my body go through those changes made me feel more feminine," says Robin, a 44-year-old mother of three. "My husband was also excited by my pregnant and post-pregnant body. We felt more in love with each other."

*Some names have been changed.

WHETHER YOUR PREGNANCY is a sexually charged joyride or more like a nauseating trip in the back of a taxi, delivery will present a speed bump. For so many men, it's the first time they really understand that, OMG, sex makes a baby — and that baby comes out of your vagina. It doesn't help to take in visuals that include crowning and a placenta plopping onto a tray. David, 45, has four sons and in all deliveries was adamant about "staying by the head" — meaning his wife's: "There was blood, screams, and then a baby was issuing from an area I had previously associated only with fun. Why would I want a closer look? As Nietzsche once said, 'If you stare long into the abyss, the abyss will also stare into you.'" Other men truly don't mind birth or manage to forget what they saw. "I'm not into blood," says Bobby, 49, a father of two girls. "So I watched the baby come out and then turned away." As for what sex was like after the birth of his first daughter, Bobby recalls, "At first, my wife was uncomfortable, but it didn't feel different for us after that. I was worried she would be bigger 'in there,' but she wasn't. And even though I had seen her vagina act in a different way than I was used to, it didn't make me want sex with her any less."

Seeing that baby emerge can also mean the end of a long, hard road for couples who struggled to conceive. Catherine, 47, and her husband tried to get pregnant for five years, having sex every two days to maximize the chances of conception. After their daughter was finally born, their sex life improved dramatically. "There was no more pressure," Catherine says. "It was just pleasure for itself." Suddenly, getting it on was fun again, and Catherine and her husband started treating themselves to Veuve Clicquot champagne — her pre-pregnancy favorite — to set the mood. "He also bought me some racy lingerie and sex toys," she says. "It was entirely different than before. We got a second sex life."

AFTER THE HOSPITAL, couples come home to what was a cozy bed made for snuggling and sex and is now a zone for bodily fluids and sleeplessness. For us moms, it's also the time we're hit with the reality of our new roles — stretch marks, nursing bras, and spit-up on every surface. Karina, 40, a mother of two boys, 5 and 8, had zero interest in sex when her firstborn was an infant. "For six months, whenever my husband put the moves on me, I'd say, 'What the hell are you doing?' I never understood how women accidentally got pregnant right after having a child, because I didn't get how they could let a man touch them."

Another problem is that lactation can decrease arousal. The hormone prolactin, necessary for milk production, lowers sex drive, as does progesterone, which nursing moms have in spades. "When I was breast-feeding, I didn't feel sexy," says Emily, 44. "I felt so out of control of my body." But her attitude toward sex was "use it or lose it," so Emily decided to give herself a test-drive before she included her husband. It didn't go well. "The first time I masturbated after pregnancy, I peed. I thought, That's romantic."

My own experience wasn't as dire. For me, a good sex life was a sign that I was still myself. So until I was up for more, I gave my husband oral sex. The ability to make him feel good made me feel good too. I wanted that closeness with him even more after going through the bonding experience of birth together.

The fact is, even if your libido bounces back to normal right away after childbirth, there's no guarantee that your body will be ready. I feel like nobody ever told me that postpartum sex could be so uncomfortable — even downright painful — the first few times. Nicola Kraus, 36, coauthor of The Nanny Diaries and mother of a 1-year-old girl, waited three months to have sex after giving birth because she shattered her pelvis during delivery. When she was healed and ready to try, it took several attempts before the pain subsided and she could orgasm. "It was a huge victory!" she says. "There was an urgency to our lovemaking after we had a baby, because we were both trying to prove that this part of our lives would survive becoming parents."

Hilda Hutcherson, M.D., an ob/gyn and mom of four, was helped by the fact that she knew what to expect after her first child. "I was still nervous, and it hurt," she says. "But gradually, things improved, and that helped after I had my other kids, because I knew sex would eventually feel good again." Now she tells her patients not to worry if sex is painful, even after the doctor-prescribed six weeks off. "It can take up to a year to feel normal if there's scarring," she says. It's also possible that the pain is due to a shift in hormone levels. "Your estrogen is lower, causing vaginal dryness," she explains. "A lubricant can help. I prefer a silicone-based lube because it lasts and you don't have to keep applying it during sex." And if you're worried about feeling "loose" down there, stop: The vagina snaps back to shape as soon as the body heals from delivery, Hutcherson says (although doing some Kegels doesn't hurt).

I REMEMBER A COUPLE OF TURNING POINTS IN MY POST-BABY SEX LIFE. After doing it half a dozen times, sex stopped hurting. I wasn't broken; it could get better. I knew from then on that our sex life was going to be just fine. Then, when my daughter stopped nursing at around 15 months, and I had lost all my baby weight and my period came back — I felt ready to tend to my own needs again.

Even though the infant months include the most grueling, exhausting, I-haven't-showered-in-three-days moments of your life, they do have their advantages. Little babies nap a lot, providing ample opportunity for midday romps on weekends. Rebecca, 42, the mother of two girls, would sneak out to the barn her husband used as a work studio to "say hi" while her daughter napped in the house. One thing would lead to another. "We had the baby monitor with us," she says. "It was the summer, so we kept the barn doors open. The people who owned the surrounding property are part of a conservative religious community, and I used to joke, 'All we need is for the neighbors to walk by when I'm going down on you.'"

It makes sense that sex helps couples reconnect, but let's face it: Sex also takes energy, which can be hard to muster. "It's counterintuitive that sex instead of sleep is what you should do," Nicola says. "But it's the only thing that will reboot the computer. Otherwise I feel like I'm in a reality show about sleep deprivation and I forget that the person with me is my soul mate. There are times we're tired and it doesn't make sense to have sex, but we do it anyway, knowing we'll feel connected afterward."

Speaking of making the time to have sex: How often is "normal" or "enough"? Sex therapist Ian Kerner, author of She Comes First and the father of two boys, had in the past advised couples to have sex as often as it felt right. But lately, after seeing more couples in a sex rut, he is more definitive: "I now advise couples to try to have sex at least once a week — even if they have a baby. Parents need to be selfish about their relationship. Happy children have happy parents, and happy parents are connected and loving."

Kay, 33, is a mom of three girls (6, 4, and 2) and says that she and her husband manage to make love three or four times a week. How? By taking opportunities as they arise. "We've even had a quickie in our bedroom while we had friends visiting and unknowingly watching our kids for us two floors down."

Some friends of mine like to occasionally get a sitter or relative to care for the kids and sneak off to a hotel, as much for the ability to sleep late as to get it on. There's something to it — an escape from their roles as parents, the freedom not to make the bed, the sudden ability to just take care of themselves for a moment.

At the end of the day, there's no one trick that magically makes sex normal again after having kids (although the hotel idea sounds pretty magical). And yeah, things might get worse before they get better. But the moral of this story is: Don't panic. Having a baby changes your sex life, but it will bounce back. Knowing that is enough to make any parent feel better. I know I do.